AMD tumbles further, ended 2012 with net loss of $1.18 billion

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't AMD going to be the chip supplier for the next gen video game consoles? That alone should be a boost to their financial dilemma considering those systems sell millions upon millions every year.

Remember that AMD is no longer a manufacturer, they are merely a CPU/GPU design studio. As such, the next gen video consoles will be merely a one time contract for design. Once the design is frozen ... that's it. So AMD may merely extend their inevitable death by another year or two.

I'm always saddened when I see AMD in such financial trouble. Like most of you, I dream of a processor market with two (or three, if we were lucky) strong competitors creating a healthy market. I've often used AMD processors for my own desktop systems - I've never felt outclassed by Intel's (often) superior performance, and I've enjoyed the bang-for-the-buck value that AMD traditionally offered. It's too bad that, even at the value-level, AMD is losing out to Intel's i3. With that said, I've recently transitioned my parents to Intel architecture, and it's likely that my next upgrade will be to Intel.

I don't have any sage economic or business advice to give - just sad to see a great company struggling.

Perhaps it's time to put money where your mouth is? You can't be sad that AMD is in trouble and then go and give your money to Intel.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't AMD going to be the chip supplier for the next gen video game consoles? That alone should be a boost to their financial dilemma considering those systems sell millions upon millions every year.

I was wondering this myself.

You have the WiiU, Playstation Orbis, and XBOX Durango all using AMD chips (excluding the WiiU CPU).

Look how they've done it, though. Selling major divisions (i.e. spinning of Global Foundries) and massive lay offs (on the order of 1/4 across their entire work force). Also the article mentioned the investment market isn't too sure of their long-term prospects, which is never a good sign. Other articles mention how their products simply aren't competitive on the order of years behind Intel designs on both the architecture efficiency and foundry technology. Even investing in ARM designs won't do much considering other companies have so many more years invested in fine-tuning designs.

I agree 100%. I've been part of a company that barely kept its head above water for a few years by selling off anything of value, laying off thousands of employees, closing dozens of plants, and screwing the remaining employees with large pay cuts. It looks OK on the bottom line for a couple years, but then you're left with no way to make money anymore, and nothing left to sell or close down. Then it's just a death spiral.The problem is, with the revolving door style management practice these days, as long as this year's financial report looks good, who cares what happens a couple years down the line? That'll be the problem of a different CEO and different board members.

once again another hit piece by ars on amd. why did you not cover intels earnings....they are under performing as well and they sent the market into a tail spin. amd beat estimates just like intel did; but still fell short, they pretty much line up the same as intel. you dont mention the fact that apu shipments have increased? their sea micro division saw large growth as well and right now they are the top suppler of dense servers? what about the fact that by q3 of this year 20% of their revenue will come from other markets? as always ars is too busy sucking intels c***, to actually do their jobs.

snip

There's a difference between "performing below expectations as a strong company hit by recession and a changing market with a road map and a track record" and "they're hemorrhaging money, have been for years, don't have a compelling product, haven't for years nor have anything on the horizon and at least they didn't go out of business this quarter."

oh really...they have been losing money for years? link please? i know you wont find one so let me save you the trouble. they have made money for the last three years straight (minus this past year of course). they still have optimal cash flow so why on earth would they have gone out of business? they have stated as fact that they have contracts set for h2 2013/ 20% of their revenue stream will come from other markets (meaning they are adding 20% more on top of what they do now). an increasing amount of design wins, increased server revenue, they have plenty of compelling products since apu shipments keep increasing...sounds like they are bouncing back just fine?

Look how they've done it, though. Selling major divisions (i.e. spinning of Global Foundries) and massive lay offs (on the order of 1/4 across their entire work force). Also the article mentioned the investment market isn't too sure of their long-term prospects, which is never a good sign. Other articles mention how their products simply aren't competitive on the order of years behind Intel designs on both the architecture efficiency and foundry technology. Even investing in ARM designs won't do much considering other companies have so many more years invested in fine-tuning designs.

why cant you just admit that you are wrong and be done with it? why must i hold your hand and lead you to the answer. here is the summary for 2011....they didnt sell any parts of their business in order to make money, nor did they make money through layoffs. either post evidence to back up your claims; or cut the crap and go troll somewhere else. apus keep gaining ground against intel solutions...so i would say they are doing fine, amd's rev streams seem to be growing, intel's are shrinking. thats why intel is down 0.10 and amd is up 0.25 cents today.

-- Gross margin was 46 percent, a sequential increase of one percent.-- Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities balance, including long-term marketable securities, was $1.91 billion at the end of the quarter.-- Computing Solutions segment revenue increased two percent sequentially and seven percent year-over-year. The sequential increase was driven by double digit growth in Server and Chipset revenue. The year-over-year increase was driven by higher mobile processor and Chipset revenue. -- Operating income was $165 million, compared with $149 million in Q3 11 and $91 million in Q4 10. -- Microprocessor ASP increased sequentially and was flat year-over-year. -- AMD launched its "Bulldozer"-based AMD Opteron(TM) 6200 Series and AMD Opteron 4200 Series processors, delivering industry-leading performance(3) for business, increased scalability for virtualization and more efficient economics for the cloud. -- HP introduced five new ProLiant systems, including the industry's fastest dual-socket database server. -- Dell introduced four new PowerEdge systems, including the world's most power-efficient blade server. The AMD-powered PowerEdge R715 was awarded Technology of the Year from InfoWorld magazine based on its outstanding virtualization performance. -- The AMD Opteron 6200 Series Processors were honored with the Analysts' Choice Award for Best Server Processor by the Linley Group and "Technology of the Year" from InfoWorld. -- AMD Opteron processor adoption in the HPC market continued, as the National Science Foundation announced a new supercomputer at the University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) will be powered by approximately 50,000 AMD Opteron 6200 series processors. -- Worldwide demand for AMD APUs continued to increase throughout the fourth quarter. AMD shipped more than 30 million APUs in 2011, including a record number of mobile processors found in notebooks from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI Samsung, Sony and Toshiba. -- AMD introduced new A-Series notebook and desktop APUs that offer improved performance and enhanced features. We expect that systems based on the refreshed A-Series APU will be offered from the world's largest PC companies in early 2012.-- Graphics segment revenue decreased five percent sequentially and 10 percent year-over-year. The sequential decrease was driven primarily by a decline in mobile graphics processor unit (GPU) shipments, partially offset by a seasonal increase in game console revenue. The year-over-year decrease was primarily driven by decreased desktop and Add-in Board (AIB) graphics revenue. -- Operating income was $27 million, compared with $12 million in Q3 11 and $68 million in Q4 10. -- GPU ASP increased sequentially and year-over-year. -- In December, AMD launched the world's fastest single-GPU graphics card(4) and the first member of its AMD Radeon(TM) HD 7000 Series graphics family, the AMD Radeon HD 7970. The HD 7970 delivers up to 150% performance improvement per square millimeter compared to our previous generation GPU, and is the industry's first 28nm GPU(5). -- AMD launched the AMD Radeon HD 7000M series mobile graphics processors for smaller form factor notebooks. Both HP and Lenovo announced new notebooks powered by the new GPU. -- AMD is the industry leader in leading-edge graphics technology, having shipped more than 100 million DirectX(R) 11 graphics engines across its GPUs and APUs that enable superior visual experiences.-- Corporate -- The Company announced a restructuring plan and implementation of operational efficiency initiatives designed to strengthen the Company's competitive positioning. The Company plans to reinvest a significant portion of the anticipated savings to fund initiatives designed to accelerate AMD's strategies for lower power, emerging markets, and the cloud. -- AMD strengthened its leadership team with the additions of Mark Papermaster as senior vice president and chief technology officer, Rajan Naik as senior vice president and chief strategy officer, and Dr. Lisa Su as senior vice president and general manager, global business units.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't AMD going to be the chip supplier for the next gen video game consoles? That alone should be a boost to their financial dilemma considering those systems sell millions upon millions every year.

Remember that AMD is no longer a manufacturer, they are merely a CPU/GPU design studio. As such, the next gen video consoles will be merely a one time contract for design. Once the design is frozen ... that's it. So AMD may merely extend their inevitable death by another year or two.

So you have a copy of the contracts?

MS learned their lesson with the original Xbox, I expect he's right. At best AMD might get a per unit royalty, but I doubt it'll amount to a whole lot.

once again another hit piece by ars on amd. why did you not cover intels earnings....they are under performing as well and they sent the market into a tail spin. amd beat estimates just like intel did; but still fell short, they pretty much line up the same as intel. you dont mention the fact that apu shipments have increased? their sea micro division saw large growth as well and right now they are the top suppler of dense servers? what about the fact that by q3 of this year 20% of their revenue will come from other markets? as always ars is too busy sucking intels c***, to actually do their jobs.

snip

There's a difference between "performing below expectations as a strong company hit by recession and a changing market with a road map and a track record" and "they're hemorrhaging money, have been for years, don't have a compelling product, haven't for years nor have anything on the horizon and at least they didn't go out of business this quarter."

oh really...they have been losing money for years? link please? i know you wont find one so let me save you the trouble. they have made money for the last three years straight (minus this past year of course). they still have optimal cash flow so why on earth would they have gone out of business? they have stated as fact that they have contracts set for h2 2013/ 20% of their revenue stream will come from other markets (meaning they are adding 20% more on top of what they do now). an increasing amount of design wins, increased server revenue, they have plenty of compelling products since apu shipments keep increasing...sounds like they are bouncing back just fine?

Look how they've done it, though. Selling major divisions (i.e. spinning of Global Foundries) and massive lay offs (on the order of 1/4 across their entire work force). Also the article mentioned the investment market isn't too sure of their long-term prospects, which is never a good sign. Other articles mention how their products simply aren't competitive on the order of years behind Intel designs on both the architecture efficiency and foundry technology. Even investing in ARM designs won't do much considering other companies have so many more years invested in fine-tuning designs.

[A year old AMD press release that he thinks is germane to the current conversation.]

I know I shouldn't, but.

What exactly does evidence of AMD's mediocre performance in 2011 have to do with the fact that AMD is hemorrhaging senior staff, has no real short term prospects, and managed to finish last year nearly a billion dollars in the red?

Microsoft buying either -- or both -- would get to make its own CPUs/SoCs for both x86 and ARM, something that would come in handy if they're really serious with the Surface.

This would piss off its OEMs but given the absolutely appalling job they're doing manufacturing and selling Windows RT/8 tablets, it probably wouldn't affect Microsoft much and anyway, it's not like they have an alternative to Windows 8 for all those laptops or ultrabooks they want to sell.

Since someone is asking for proof on financials I will add the following.

Take a look at AMD's net operating margin. Over the last five years they have gone from losing gigantic amounts of money to less gigantic amounts of money. Click on Balance Sheets and you can see that their assets have shrunk while their debt has risen. They are operating at single percentage margins.

Then think about the market. Intel is the 800lb gorilla and it took a hit with the change in the markets. AMD is the Rhesus monkey. When it gets hit people think it will go splat. Intel has had solid leadership, AMD has executives bailing out every year. Never a good sign. Nobody wants to be captain of a sinking ship. Intel has a more diverse product portfolio that seems better aimed at the changing marketplace. They are talking up sub 10 watt x86 processors. What's AMD's answer?

I don't want to see AMD go away. AMD has been the perennial 'can-do' underdog for years. I want to see them rise from the ashes and pull another one over on Intel. But year after year, product disappointment after product disappointment, my faith has been waning.

Another Ars article posited that they might not make it through 2014 which I personally thought was trolling and silly. But to make it sound like everything is right as rain and getting better over at AMD is insane.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't AMD going to be the chip supplier for the next gen video game consoles? That alone should be a boost to their financial dilemma considering those systems sell millions upon millions every year.

Remember that AMD is no longer a manufacturer, they are merely a CPU/GPU design studio. As such, the next gen video consoles will be merely a one time contract for design. Once the design is frozen ... that's it. So AMD may merely extend their inevitable death by another year or two.

So you have a copy of the contracts?

Ever since the Nvidia/Xbox disaster, console companies own the designs to the silicon and pay small royalties.

--

Can someone explain how ARM is going to compete with Intel when they have 1/10 of the employees and revenue of even AMD, never mind Intel?

The writing was on the wall 3 or so years ago. The problem is now, because customers know they are in trouble, they are not buying their products.

Last Fall I bought a triple-core Rana (for medium gaming), and an A6-5400K (as a kids' PC/HTPC). I got both of them, and the motherboards for about $200. I figured that the $200 was better served buying 2 full machines than an i3-3220 with motherboard.

The on-board graphics in the A6-5400K are actually handling most things far better than expected. The only real reason my discrete video cards aren't AMD is that NVidias drivers have been hassle-free for me. When I'm due for a new video card, that may change.

From a CPU standpoint, AMD's high point was when Intel was making the triple-misstep of not developing a 64 bit extension to IA32, going whole hog into the dead-end Netburst (P4) architecture, and building the PA-RISC killer (Itanium) that nobody asked for.

The problem of course is that Intel got its act together, released the Core2, and went back to gobbling up the entire market. AMD just couldn't push past the market inertia enough to really capitalize on Intel's temporary insanity. That same inertia means that when AMD missteps (Bulldozer) that it instantly goes into the red and people start talking about the death of the company.

The writing was on the wall 3 or so years ago. The problem is now, because customers know they are in trouble, they are not buying their products.

Last Fall I bought a triple-core Rana (for medium gaming), and an A6-5400K (as a kids' PC/HTPC). I got both of them, and the motherboards for about $200. I figured that the $200 was better served buying 2 full machines than an i3-3220 with motherboard.

The on-board graphics in the A6-5400K are actually handling most things far better than expected. The only real reason my discrete video cards aren't AMD is that NVidias drivers have been hassle-free for me. When I'm due for a new video card, that may change.

My $0.02

All AMD has left is do it yourself people who build desktops. With desktops becoming a dying platform. Plus AMD having trouble getting into manufactures of PC's. I think its clear AMD died a long time ago. Their is not enough PC hobby people to keep it alive anymore.

Perhaps it's time to put money where your mouth is? You can't be sad that AMD is in trouble and then go and give your money to Intel.

You ever thought that, maybe, just maybe, the demise of AMD might affect Intel down the road, and that investors to Intel would start to get nervous, because such a change in balance can cause unintended consequences. Not every shift in balance that would appear to go in favor of one company would be a welcomed boon to the market in general.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't AMD going to be the chip supplier for the next gen video game consoles? That alone should be a boost to their financial dilemma considering those systems sell millions upon millions every year.

Remember that AMD is no longer a manufacturer, they are merely a CPU/GPU design studio. As such, the next gen video consoles will be merely a one time contract for design. Once the design is frozen ... that's it. So AMD may merely extend their inevitable death by another year or two.

They will still make money off every console sold. They may outsource the manufacturing process to another company, but then that stock comes back and AMD sells the product, not Global Foundries.